


Talisman

by lonelywalker



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, Old Friends, References to Drug Use, References to Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-16
Updated: 2012-11-16
Packaged: 2017-11-18 20:04:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/564753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock visits an old friend.</p><p>Spoilers for 1x05 and 1x06.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Talisman

“What did you tell her?”

Alistair had never had many friends he’d cared to keep, and certainly very few he’d be eager to see sitting on the stoop of his apartment building on the wrong side of midnight. There had been a time when his heart had leapt at the very thought of Sherlock Holmes thinking of him – a letter pondering a technical problem, a phone call with an odd request, a voice at his ear saying _please, I need you_ – but that had been a long time ago. Recent experience had taught him that Sherlock’s presence was just another augur of ill will: someone was dead, or would be.

“You know precisely what I told her.” He walked past Sherlock and up the stairs a little faster than his usual pace, but pushed open the door and held it for a second, expecting to be followed. 

His building was hardly in the worst neighbourhood, and certainly nothing like as bad as his old digs in London had once been, but he doubted too many of his neighbours would truly appreciate being kept awake for yet another night by his young friend. 

“I, in fact, know very little,” Sherlock hissed urgently by his ear as they climbed the stairs. There was a lift, but it was only two flights and walking was always faster, even carrying a stack of hardbacks as Alistair was now. “You could have told her the truth, or any permutation of lies or inventions or inaccuracies. You used to make your living as a dissembler, after all.”

“I usually write ‘actor’ on my CV,” Alistair said, and handed Sherlock the books to hold while he unlocked the door. “Tea?”

The books seemed to have done the trick. Sherlock was already going through them, sniffing at titles, turning over the top one to read the author blurb. “I suppose. None of that green stuff though.”

In the kitchen, Alistair heard the door close, and then the creak of Sherlock sitting down on his well-worn, third-hand sofa. He put the kettle on to boil. If Miss Watson had thought to give him her number, he might have called her, or at least sent a text… But Sherlock didn’t seem drunk or high, merely himself, and texting a young woman in the middle of the night to come and retrieve a sober man seemed like the height of bad manners.

Sherlock put down the whole stack on the coffee table and looked at Alistair, looked back at the books. He scratched the back of his head. “The truth, incidentally, is more than a little obscure to me at the moment also, so you understand my concern.”

“Oh, I do.” Alistair stayed where he was, leaning in the doorway between rooms. The last time they’d seen each other, Sherlock had been a lot less coherent. He’d been exhausted, emotional, out of his mind in more than one sense. Then it had seemed only natural to hold him, stroke his hair, tell him everything would be all right…

He folded his arms. “I only hope you understand mine.”

Sherlock frowned at him, or perhaps merely squinted, and picked up the top book again. “This,” he said, “is poorly-researched tosh.” He tossed it onto the far end of the sofa. The next book met with a similar fate, maligned as “revisionist history without any basis in reality”. The third: Sherlock examined the front, the back, thumbed through the chapters, threw it away too. “I don’t like the cover. Poor grasp of anatomy.”

Even when Sherlock had been ten, or rather fourteen, which is when Alistair – already forty and far more self-conscious than the teenager – had actually met him, he hadn’t been petulant. Precocious and utterly convinced of his own brilliance, yes. Petulant, no.

The kettle whistled. 

“Did you like her?” Sherlock asked when Alistair set his cup before him, sat down next to him, albeit two book-lengths away. 

“Who? Your minder?” Alistair considered the question, or rather what sort of answer Sherlock might be hoping for. “She’s very… _sharp_ is the word, I think. I can understand why you like her. She can keep up with you more than most. But she really has very little idea of what she’s getting herself into when it comes to you.”

Sherlock was looking at him over the rim of his teacup, studying him in a way Alistair had seen him study many people over the years. He’d only been personally subjected to such an analysis once, on that very first meeting at a café near a railway station… He’d forgotten which one, but he could never forget Sherlock. Fourteen years old, hair dark, eyes keen. He’d been wearing the uniform of his expensive public school, creased and starched with almost military precision.

“I thought you’d be older,” Alistair had said with a smile, prepared to give the boy a little praise for the maturity of his letters, his fascinating insights.

Instead, Sherlock had smiled and laid a cool hand over Alistair’s on the table. “I know.”

Now Sherlock set down his cup, very carefully, very quietly, at the edge of the table. “You told her about Irene.”

“Isn’t that something she should know?”

“That very much depends on who determines ‘should’.”

“Someone with your best interests at heart, I imagine.”

“Is that what you think you are?” Sherlock sat back against the sofa, one ankle laid across the opposite knee, the very picture of genteel relaxation but for the tension in his body, the quivering anxiety of a young actor who, despite weeks of rehearsals, is becoming aware that he has forgotten one crucial line.

“You should have guessed when I asked you to play my father for an evening that I’ve always been looking to you to be my father. The problem is, you’ve never actually _met_ dear old dad, have you? I was never seeking out someone wise and nurturing. I wanted someone just as inherently, bitterly rotten as he was. And I found you. At least in your case your failings of character are more easily perceived. How old are you now? Almost seventy? And alone, rejected, a failure, hoping against hope I’ll drop my pants and let you blow me.”

A lifetime of playing parts, mastering accents and body language, delving into the souls of great villains and romantic heroes, had never quite gifted Alistair with the ability he craved most – to remain entirely impassive in the face of Sherlock’s furious recital of the truth. Or whatever he believed to be the truth.

Alistair had witnessed such tirades several times, and had them directed against himself on more than one occasion. But Sherlock had never been sober before, nor so icily calm.

“It was sweet of you, though, to wait until I was sixteen,” Sherlock said. “Not that, legally speaking, it mattered at the time. Still, your assistance in my research was invaluable.”

Alistair stared, speechless, at his teacup. It was a long moment before he could make himself speak, hoping against hope that the tears pricking his eyes would never actually fall. “So she meant something to you, this Irene? She meant enough that you wanted to die, or at the very least not to feel anything at all for as long as you possibly could. But you came here, to me, instead of letting things spiral completely out of control. Because I’m your friend. And it’s because I’m your friend that you know precisely how best to hurt me.”

“Isn’t it all true?” Sherlock and impassivity were clearly not strangers. “Your dream was always to be on the stage, playing the greats. Now all you do is read about them, and not much of that either. Instead it’s telling bored housewives where to find _Fifty Shades of Grey_ , and you’re not even the manager. How do you like reporting to some kid fresh out of Columbia who thinks the job you’d love to have is beneath him? And he’s not going to ask you to dinner, by the way. Yes he’s pretty, but you have neither the looks nor the power to interest someone like that. Who’s the ring for, if you don't mind me asking?”

Alistair’s left hand involuntarily clenched up. “You know who it’s for.”

“But he died _years_ ago, a whole ocean away. Get a grip, Al. Move on. There’s a certain dignity in accepting your utter failure as a member of the human race.”

He imagined the sting of Sherlock’s jaw against his knuckles, the vivid freshness of blood on a swollen lip, and, naturally, the look of faint satisfaction in Sherlock’s eyes. 

Alistair swallowed, unclenched his fingers, and made himself smile. “Do you have a selection of Miss Watson’s greatest failures on hand too? I expect being young and beautiful and intelligent, and no doubt also very accomplished, makes it a harder sell.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Sherlock sighed, his body slumping, the tension gone. “Everyone has their weak points they recite to themselves daily.”

“And for you…”

“Booze. Heroin. Irene. And you, evidently.” He jumped up. “I don’t suppose you have any biscuits in here, do you?” Rummaging sounds came from the tin in the kitchen. A moment later he was back, digestive between his teeth, something faintly penitent in his expression. “I expect I owe you an apology.”

“I expect you do.”

Sherlock gazed at him, munching thoughtfully on the biscuit. “I’m sorry, Alistair. That was very rude and unfair of me, and I apologise unreservedly for my behaviour.”

The tone left something to be desired, but it was the first time Alistair had even heard the words. Miss Watson must have been having a strangely good effect on young Sherlock. He studied his fingernails, listening to Sherlock devour the rest of the digestive. “You don’t remember, do you? That’s why you’re here.”

Sherlock popped the last crumbs in his mouth, sucked on his fingertips. “You could, as I mentioned, have told her anything from the truth to complete lies. But however much you like playing pranks on unsuspecting women at my behest, I doubt you’d lie to her while also telling her about Irene. So I have to presume you told her the truth. The trouble I’ve been having is I’m not entirely sure, not _positive_ , how much of the truth you actually know.”

Lying to Sherlock and getting away with it was possible. He could do it if he focused, if he was lucky. But it was so very late and he was tired, and Sherlock was, after all, still that same boy who had written him excited letters about the Yorkshire accent, who had kissed him once with more passion than he’d experienced in twenty years of other lovers, who had much more recently spent much of the night vomiting in his bathroom. 

“Does it matter? It almost drove you to destroy yourself, Sherlock. You should tell her. She wants to help you, and I believe she actually _can_ help you.”

“Unlike you.”

“I can only enable you, which is why you’re not still sleeping in my bed and stealing my fags.”

“It’s a very bad habit.”

“We’re both rather attracted to those.” Alistair took a breath and said the words, hoping he was making the correct choice: “All you said was her name. Just her name, over and over. I don’t know anything else, and I assume neither does your poor companion.”

Sherlock nodded, looking at the worn and slightly frayed carpet by his feet. “I see.”

“So, is there anything you’d like to tell me?”

Sherlock’s thigh beeped. He pulled out his phone, tapped it. “Watson requires I check in every two hours. Not usually in the middle of the night, but she must have realised I escaped. Just telling her I’m with my favourite father figure… No fear I’ll shoot up here. Not anymore, anyway.”

Alistair rubbed a hand over his eyes and stood up. “Well, you can stay if you like. On the sofa, mind. Some of us have to be at work by nine. Be a dear and try not to leave the kitchen a _complete_ mess.”

“I really should be going.” 

Despite his words, Sherlock made no move but to absently straighten his jacket. Alistair picked up their cups, looked at him expectantly.

“I’m sorry about Tom,” Sherlock said, finally. “He was a good man. I had no right to dredge that up.”

Alistair did his best to wave off the sentiment. “It was a long time ago.”

Sherlock stepped aside, letting him into the kitchen. Alistair was dumping the remains of their tea in the sink when Sherlock said, in a whisper just loud enough for him to hear: “She died, too.”

“What happened?” He’d expected a break-up or, more likely, a murderer escaping justice. What was personal to Sherlock usually represented itself as the deeply impersonal to everyone else.

Sherlock shook his head, cleared his throat. “As I said, I should be going. Thank you for the tea, Al, and also for potentially saving my life. Doubtless I’ll be in touch.”

“I’m available for accent consultations and father impersonations at any time. But during business hours would be preferable.”

Sherlock smiled briefly and turned to go. Stopped. “By the way, I… may have been less than accurate in something I said earlier.”

“The part about me being an acting failure, or when you implied I’d been some sort of child predator?”

“That manager of yours. It’s true he’ll never ask you out, but not because he doesn’t like you, rather because he’s _terrified_ of you. Because you know his job back to front and would probably work for next to nothing. You should buy him coffee. Even if you don’t get laid, you’ll be doing his blood pressure some good.”

Alistair laughed, out of relief more than anything. “You’re always such a humanitarian.”

The door slammed on Sherlock’s way out and, somewhere, a dog started up a seemingly endless series of excited barks. Alistair locked the door, mentally prepared himself for the neighbourly complaints in the morning, and… he should have fallen into bed, with or without his clothes, but he found himself standing by the window instead, watching as Sherlock appeared from the doorway below, looked both ways, and started off down the street, just another lonely figure searching for a cab.

He’d be back – a brief email, an almost-incomprehensible text, a voice on the phone – and he’d doubtless bring trouble with him, one way or another. A more sensible man would have severed all contact and fled the country, but while Sherlock’s friends were disparate sorts of people, Alistair had no fear in assuming that they all shared the same deficient instinct for self-preservation when it came to Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps Miss Watson was different, perhaps she would simply see out her contract, gather her things, and leave him behind. In any case, Alistair hoped to see her at the bookshop again soon. 

Any friend of Sherlock’s was, naturally, a friend of his.


End file.
